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The bandido or bandit uprisings that began in 1959 had their origins in the resistance of some peasants to agrarian reform. Many small property owners with a few coffee trees or tobacco plants or a small cattle herd feared the redistribution of private lands. Many landless rural laborers also joined the fight against the comunistas who administered the agrarian reforms. The Castro Regime maintained that the “real” peasants supported the Revolution. Indeed, rural residents who benefitted positively from land reform did fill out the militia units that fought the “bandits” in the Escambray Mountains and elsewhere on the island. The Cuban counterrevolution, in this regard, compares to the Vendée in France, the Cristero Revolt in Mexico, the kulaks of Russia, and the Contra Movement of Nicaragua. Sources : Cuban military records and CIA documents.

On January 30, 1962, Cuba was expelled from the Organization of American States (OAS) on the basis that “the Castro regime was an ally of the Sino-Soviet bloc” in violation of the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance commonly known as the Rio Treaty. At a ministerial conference held in Punta del Este in 1962, two-thirds of the OAS members (that is to say fourteen countries) approved a resolution excluding Cuba from the Inter-American system. By this act, the United States won a battle that lasted two years and whose main objective was to ostracize Cuba from the hemispheric system to give a strong signal to Fidel Castro and the potential pro-communist revolutionary in the region. The underside of the Punta del Este Conference shows that the United States achieved a victory, “the kind that we cannot be proud of”, wrote a member of the U.S. delegation Samuel Belk to President John F. Kennedy. The archives confirm that the United States did not skimp to pressure some delegations and to monetize certain countries in order to bring them to vote in favor his position against Cuba.

The “Izquierda Nacional”, led by Jorge Abelardo Ramos, was a political-cultural group, the visibility and public intervention of which, grew in the mid-20th century. From the beginning, this group intended to rethink the basis of socialism, through a profound debate, an editorial policy and the spreading of several publications. The triumph of the Cuban Revolution meant a new moment for this family´s alignment in left culture. The support they first gave to the Cuban process, seen as an anti-imperialist event, later became an estrangement in relation to the roads to socialism in Latin America. Ramos and his group developed a thorough critique of “foquismo” and, specially, of Ernesto “Che” Guevara´s thesis, that we analyze in this article, taking into consideration the crisis and transformation of argentinian left towards the early 60's.

The academic literature has demonstrated the early impact the Cuban Revolution had upon Latin America. In Argentina, it is the growing literature devoted to the intellectuals which has been wondering the most about this influx. The pioneering work of Oscar Teran and Silvia Sigal has shown this significant influence on an important intellectual group which was under a process of transformation in the 1960s. In this paper, I will analyze the ideological impact this revolution had on the student movement which, due to the process of left radicalization that it was going through, would begin to increase its effect on the national political scene. To avoid falling into facile generalizations, this paper will focus on the situation at the University of Buenos Aires, the largest university in the country. In particular, I am interested in showing what groups this event affected the most and the different ways in which its influence was perceived. This is necessary in order to refrain from the common and equivocal expression that presupposes the impact of the Cuban process oriented all the youth towards left positions, thus sidestepping the opposite effect.

It is well known that the Cuban revolution was a particular moment that brought many political and cultural changes. In this paper I explore how the important Uruguayan review Marcha - which in the 60s became internationally relevant - revised its traditional topics under the light of the revolution: anti-imperialism, Latin American integration and the defense of democracy. I analyze a short period in which the Cuban revolution did not mean what it was going to mean soon. This allows me to examine at Marcha the transformation and redefinition process of the revolution’s meanings. The reception of the revolution experience was related to the questions about Uruguay as an exceptional country in Latin America. Specifically in a period that has been considered one of an “structural crisis” that could affect Uruguayan viability.